Apparently, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is okay with going to voters during a future office run in Arizona and perhaps across the nation and telling them “Yeah, I broke my word to public school children.”
As Az Blue Meanie and other media outlets have reported, the soon-to-be former Arizona Governor, after having, as State Senator Sean Bowie said for a different news organization, promised to convene a special session to freeze the Aggregate Expenditure Limit (AEL,) so public schools can fully receive the long overdue funding increase they need to fully educate children, reneged on his commitment to do so this week.
Apparently, Mr. Ducey, knowing that his successor, Governor-Elect Hobbs, would not pursue many of the same plutocratic policies he holds dear, wanted to use a special session to enact some legislation, like additional monies for the rich in voucher expansion, to go along with suspending the AEL.
Suffice it to say, leading education activists inside and outside the state government are incensed at the Governor going back on his word to public school children.
Assistant Democratic House Leader Jennifer Longdon spoke with Blog for Arizona and like Senator Bowie for another media outlet, recounted that the Governor’s representative during the budget negotiations last year committed Mr. Ducey to a special session to “freeze the AEL with no conditions” attached.
When asked to respond to Mr. Ducey breaking his promise to public school children, Representative Longdon said:
“Governor Ducey wrote a bad check to our public schools. This is unforgivable. We owe it to Arizona’s Public Schools to get this right. It’s up to them not to kick the can down the road. Governor Ducey was part of the problem. He’s got to be part of the solution.”
When asked about the Governor wanting to possibly provide more Empowerment Scholarship Assistance (ESA) voucher assistance to families whose children already attended private schools before the expansion. London said:
“The ESA expansion that just passed along party lines will be the next ALT Fuel debacle (in the legislature.)
London then recounted that the ESA expansion was “decoupled” from the budget talks because no Democrat would vote for it. Thinking of the recent reports of the explosion of ESA requests from rich families looking for the equivalent of a tax cut, she finished by stating:
“We’re already seeing that we were right. We are already seeing the wisdom of our concern.”
The Arizona Democratic Senate Caucus was equally incredulous with the Governor’s broken commitment, issuing a statement that read:
“Watching Governor Ducey continue to hold our public school funding hostage is disgraceful. Breaking your word to other legislators is one thing, but sending our students, teachers, and administrators into another semester of uncertainty is entirely unacceptable. The votes are there to lift the AEL – your own caucus handed them to you. We appropriated this money, why should our schools have to beg to use it? This whole charade is a childish stunt that disrespects the thousands of Arizonans that rely so heavily on the Arizona public school system.”
Marisol Garcia, the leader of the Arizona Education Association (AEA) posted on social media:
SHOCKER: The Lame Duck Governor won’t help AZ public schools, students and communities unless… wait for it … HE gets something!
If the schools shut down, Ducey is to blame!
“Ducey: No special session on school funding without other issues” https://t.co/bdTz4OTIca— Marisol Garcia (@MarisolGarciaAZ) December 6, 2022
Beth Lewis, the Executive Director for Save Our Schools Arizona commented to Blog for Arizona:
“Governor Ducey & Republican lawmakers are holding hostage $1.4B in funding which they allocated for AZ public school students, demanding more ESA voucher funding for private schools. Their eagerness to turn AZ kids into political pawns illustrates what has always been their agenda: starving public schools and creating a privatized school system. We call upon all lawmakers to stand strong and agree only to a special session dedicated to lifting the school spending cap (AEL), not a reckless special session of wheeling and dealing with those who do not have Arizona kids’ best interests at heart.”
Save Our Schools also issued a press release this week highlighting what Representative Longdon revealed: The ESA has become a money grab bag for the state’s rich and shameless. An excerpt of their release is below:
“$210 Million Hit to Public Schools in 3 Months
Just two months into the new law, nearly 30,000 applications have been filed for new universal ESA vouchers, totaling an immediate $210 million hit to the state general fund (and therefore Arizona’s public schools). With over 5,000 applications currently in review, the total will inevitably reach over $245 million this quarter. This cost dwarfs the JLBC (Joint Legislative Budget Committee) legislative budget analysis, which estimated a $33 million impact for the entire 2022-23 school year.
Applications continue to pour in, the vast majority from families whose children already attend private school or homeschool. It is likely that the whole ESA voucher program will cost the state well over $500 million total this school year, and reach $1 billion in a few short years.
It’s Not School Choice – It’s a Government Handout for the Wealthy
As we warned lawmakers last May and June, 85,000 students attend private schools or homeschools in Arizona. It was always glaringly likely that most of these families would gladly take a $7,000 ESA voucher per child—essentially a coupon from AZ taxpayers with few strings attached. Current data released by the AZ Dept of Education shows that 80% of universal ESA voucher applications are from families looking to subsidize their current private school tuition or homeschool costs – NOT students leaving public schools.
Grifters, Fraudsters, and Waste – Oh My
Arizona lawmakers refused to add a cap to the universal voucher expansion (HB2853), so there is zero limit to how much funding can be stripped from Arizona’s public schools and siphoned to unaccountable, unregulated private schools. Even worse, the legislature failed to account for these hundreds of millions by appropriating additional funding for the program, meaning the funds must be stripped from the education general fund despite the fact that most families are not leaving public schools.
Arizona’s universal voucher expansion was passed with zero academic accountability, so we can’t know whether students are learning, what teachers are teaching, and whether voucher schools are performing at the same level as public district schools — or comparably much worse, as is documented in other states.
With universal ESA vouchers, Arizona lawmakers slopped together a free-for-all taxpayer-grab game with no guardrails and no rules. Private schools and homeschools have no mandates on what they teach or how they teach it; they are legally allowed to teach any curriculum they wish, regardless of whether it is grounded in truth. And since the legislature intentionally set up irresponsibly lax oversight of the program, we will be watching for instances of fraud and abuse.”
It looks like it is going to be up to the responsible leadership of Governor Katie Hobbs and like-minded public servants in the Arizona State Legislature to freeze the AEL and undo the plutocratic and fiscally unsound policies of the Ducey tenure.